Sunday, April 29, 2007

Religion continued

Another great religious themed TED talk is Julia Sweeney: "Letting Go of God". She gives an amusing account of a meeting with Mormon evangelists saying how strange they come across when hearing them for the first time. She compares this with how strange Christian beliefs would be if you weren't familiar with them.

This another instance Betrand Russell's teapot argument:
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.